Buried Secrets
by EagleHawk
Summary: Hermione's life has never been a walk in the park but what happens when old followers of the Dark Lord start to cause problems? Will a womans mistake be corrected after nearly two decades? WARNING: mentions of abuse and rape. Au and slightly OC.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

**A/N: Hope you enjoy and please review! I love hearing your thoughts! **

**Prolog**

The sickly clean stench could be smelt anywhere. They were in the hospital after all, what could you expect. The halls were busy with the Hub-bub of patients and doctors traveling the halls. Everything was like any normal day, except for the 29 year old woman and the baby girl. Even though they looked normal nothing was going to be the same for them within the next few hours. Sitting in her hospital bed in room A208 in the maternity ward Sue Clearwater gazed down at her baby girl, she was middle aged and had possibly had this baby from an affair but she loved her daughter.

Tears spilled from warm brown eyes and down tan cheeks while the mental count down haunted her. The deal she had made with her father was if he didn't tell Harry about the accident then she would put her baby up for adoption. She couldn't risk uprooting Leah from her father and she knew that it would happen if he found out.

The baby had a cap of silky carmel curls and her mother's eyes. A small button nose sat in the middle of her face and a soft sprinkle of freckles covered her cheeks. Her little mouth was stretched into a wide gummy smile aimed at her mother laughing periodically while one of her tiny fists was curled around one of her mother's fingers waving it around.

Another woman sat with her looking sadly at her friend and her daughter. Laila Wisely nee Swan had known her friend since early childhood and so knew how much this was hurting her. Looking at the baby girl in Sue's arms she memorized every detail swearing to herself that if she ever ran into her friends daughter she'd protect the girl with her life just like she would for her two month old baby Lily. The door opened and the nurse came in and stood next to Sue silently waiting for her to say her good-byes to her daughter. Stifling a sob Sue bent and placed a gentle kiss on her baby's forehead; a lone tear slipped from her eye, slid down her cheek and landed on her daughters rosy ones, she whispered, "I love you Hermione."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry for the wait guys. I had some trouble with my computer but now its all good. Thankfully I have my wondeful beta skyla-lilly that's been helping me alot with this chapter. Hopefully you like it and please review. :)**

Lily lay in bed staring at the dark ceiling thinking, just thinking. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Whenever she couldn't find sleep she often found herself swept up into the world of memories whether good or bad varied on each night. She remembered when she had gawked like everyone else when Kingsley had announced that Hermione Granger, 'the brains of the Golden Trio' was taking the Head Auror position. Shock and outrage had been at the forefront of her mind. Why had she been chosen when there were so many others that had risked just as much as she and had the required training or experience? She'd been reluctant to follow orders to say the least.

When Harry had killed Voldemort, everyone had expected him to take on the position and none would have said a word against it and apparently that went for Hermione as well after Potter disappeared. She watched cautiously as the hardened 17 year old reshaped the auror department in a matter of weeks reorganizing things into a more proficient manor.

It wasn't until people started to settle into the new routine that Hermione was attacked and it wasn't until then that she fully understood why Kingsley named her the head. There had been four of them, some left over spy in the department and a few snatchers that had managed to avoid captor. She had dealt with them easily enough but that wasn't what had captured Lily's attention. She had been completely calm during the whole thing and had dealt her spells with a deadly accuracy that frightened Lily to be honest.

It didn't shock her that after words that Kingsley had cornered Hermione into getting a bodyguard. It was both a personal and publically good move. Hermione was his friend and partner when it came to the minister though few knew that, but even more she was the last of the Golden Trio. With Harry missing and Ron being secluded with his family, he wanted to keep the peoples beacon of hope and guidance as safe as possible even if it meant pissing her off in the process.

What did surprise her though was that her boss had requested her to be that guard, although it shouldn't have surprised her really. Kingsley had wanted someone with her everywhere she went and keeping her safe 24/7, which essentially meant moving in with her boss. The minister had readily agreed not questioning her motives once again a testimony to the amount of trust he had in her.

So the next day Lily had officially become her bosses shadow in a way. She followed her throughout the ministry watching in awe as the staff snapped to attention when she walked by and followed her orders to a T. When the hours at the ministry were finished she watched as her boss packed up her work for the night and flooed to St. Mungo's where she watched her transform to from the hardened veteran to the soothing and stern Healer. Lily didn't know how she had worked up that position and she didn't care either. Her only job was to watch and protect not dig into her life like a freaking parasite.

After the shift a St. Mungo's was done they left and again she saw yet another face to her boss that had originally been nothing to her but a pillar to lean on and ask for a little guidance from. They would floo to her flat and there she would greet her godson/adopted son from his grandmother. She watched as all the walls that had been in place fell revealing the scared and grieving young woman that she was. She finally saw the vulnerability in her old classmate, the loneliness that threatened to consume her and love she possessed for her Teddy and her daughter.

When it was around two in the morning she would finally go to bed. On that first day Lily had watched her boss turn from one persona to the next. She had thought she was finally beginning to understand why Hermione had been so reluctant to let anyone guard her. Privacy. With the press hovering over every move that the young mother made came to feel sorry that Hermione was losing what little was left of her privacy. At least with her Hermione wouldn't be judged for her actions.

Weeks passed and in that time she became accustomed to the terror filled screams that filled the room next to hers and having to get up at night to shake her out of any new nightmare that had managed to creep up. She came to recognize the signs for when her body what about to go into one of its fits, the after effects of the Cruciatus curse and had begun to see the human Hermione instead of the strong virtually invincible one.

The weeks turned into months and with each passing day she began to understand the amount that her friend was sacrificing for everyone without them even being the wiser. The months turned into years all the while she stood by her friends side watching. Always watching as she helped build the ministry back up from the ground. Watching as she helped repair Gringotts and form better ties between them and other wizards. Watching as she helped reconstruct Hogwarts putting some of her own wards into effect and creating a new map specifically for the Head of Hogwarts in emergency cases. Continually watching as she raised one-month-old Teddy to a two-year-old toddler. She had watched and waited for the time in which she would be able to repay her friend for all that she had given and still continued to give.

Staring up at the dark ceiling Lily was beginning to wonder if she would ever be able to repay her friend for everything she had given. Turning to look at the clock it was three in the morning and she hadn't heard a peep. Maybe tonight would be one of the few that allowed them a decent night's sleep. Closing her eyes and turning over she drifted into peaceful unawareness.

oxoxoxox

Hermione sat at her desk scanning the latest updates on patients. Technically she wasn't supposed to take their files home but the Head Administrator had allowed seeing as too who she was and how busy her schedule could get. He trusted her and that was enough.

Sighing she closed the folder holding the Longbottom's file. They were making slow progress, but progress nonetheless. She had been working on developing a treatment for people who had been held under the Curciatus curse for too long. It was supposed to help alleviate the lasting shocks that could rake the victim's body and help heal the mind if said patient had gone insane from the curse. She had started developing it in her spare time just after the war had ended and had just finished it four months previously.

Slowly she rubbed her temples that had started to ache from the added stress and exhaustion. She had come home with the intention of not going to bed seeing as it was the full moon and Teddy had a tendency to get a little cranky this of the month. He wasn't a werewolf but he had inherited some of the characteristics that made up one. The only way that seemed to calm him was for her to hold him into the wee hours of the night in her office where her walls were covered in portraits of long dead friends and heroes.

Right now though, he lay in her lap, with his small face pressed into her stomach, one of his fists clenched firmly around the fabric of her baggy pajama shirt. Smiling softly she ran long soft feminine fingers through his silky turquoise hair. In that moment she forgot her overwhelming exhaustion and the crushing weight she bore on her shoulders every day. She just looked down at her son with a loving, tender smile. A typical mother's smile.

oxoxoxx

Kingsley stared gravely at the older couple. Lucius had been his informant on the ins and outs of things that really were risky and not somewhere where he would have wanted any of the aurors, least especially Hermione and by extension her bodyguard Lily Wisely. Thinking of what the bodyguard's mother would do to him is she found out that her only child had been sent into such dangerous areas sent shivers down his spine.

Sighing heavily he asked the one question that would determine when his partner would be moved.

"When?"

"In three days form what I could gather but it could be tomorrow." Lucius usually wasn't a man that showed his emotions that frequently, but when it came to the young witch in question he held nothing back. She had saved him from a lifelong sentence in Azkaban and from the most unpleasant end when some of the escaped Death Eaters had come after him and his wife.

Narcissa on the other hand had her own set of debts to the young woman she thought of as a daughter. She had not only saved her life but, had also not held any blame to her son for what he was forced to do to her. She allowed them to see their granddaughter, when she had every right to keep them as far away as possible. She had taken in her niece's son when she and her husband had passed. She had looked after Andy and provided her with ample time with her grandson.

But most of all she hadn't looked at them any differently than before. She just saw them for who they were and accepted it. She didn't try to place blame where there very well could have been, she wasn't angry or spiteful but understanding and compassionate to a fault. She understood what they did and why and didn't hold that against them.

And she was one of the few who chose to see them that way.

Closing his eyes Kingsley groaned internally. It wasn't going to be easy trying to get Hermione to leave especially when she found out that she would have to be leaving her kids. But it was safest that way. Teddy would go to Andy and Nora would go with the Malfoy's where blood protection wards would be set up, the very same wards that Dumbledore had used for Harry.

Draco was the only loose end. But seeing he was living in France with his fiancé Astoria Greengrass and had refused to be part of his daughter's life there was little they could do but send a missive and hope he didn't act negatively. In secret all of them had thought that he was too ashamed of what he was forced to do to Hermione to be able to face her or his daughter again, hence the move and new fiancé. They had hoped he would get over it but it didn't seem to be the case.

Looking back up at the couple before him he nodded slightly. It was probably best that they came anyways. Narcissa had a way of calming Hermione that no else did. It had baffled Kingsley to no end until he had taken a look into her records. She had been raised in an orphanage since the day she was born. She hadn't known what motherly affection was like until Molly Weasley and even then she was quick to assume the worst of Hermione. He highly suspected that the only times that Hermione had allowed herself to acknowledge that she desperately wanted a mother was when she was near Narcissa and allowed her to dote on her however few occasions that was.

In that regard he knew exactly where he was going to be sending her. It may bring about painful memories but he also knew that knowing Hermione she had most likely wanted to know who her parents were for a long time. That and they were able to cast blood protection wards on the area.

Looking back down at his desk and at the photo of the woman that looked so much like his friend he smiled slightly. Maybe now Hermione would be able to move forward and just be.


End file.
